Ecstasy
MDMA, or Ecstasy, was first made in a lab in Germany in 1912. The German pharmaceutical company E. Merck patented it in 1914, not as a medicine, but as a chemical for making more useful drugs later on. MDMA was forgotten until 1953, when the United States Army funded a secret University of Michigan study to develop chemical weapons. After learning that MDMA was non-toxic, the government put it back on the shelf. Rumor says that the drug was tested for mind control purposes, or as a “truth drug”, but there is not actual evidence of that.
In 1978, Alexander Shulgin wrote a book detailing the MDMA experience called Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved: A Chemical Love Story. Many psychiatrists took Shulgin's findings seriously enough to combine MDMA with sessions with their patients' normal therapy.
In the early '80s, MDMA made its way from the doctor's office to the dance floor from a Texas entrepreneur who synthesized the drug in a lab. He re-named it "Ecstasy" and sold it for $20 a hit—legally—in Dallas-Fort Worth clubs. But, the Drug Enforcement Agency worked quickly to outlaw MDMA, and Ecstasy officially became an illegal drug in 1985.
What Ecstasy does is simple. It combines two opposite effects, stimulation and relaxation, but in also provides a small quality of empathy. Psychotherapist RD Laing took MDMA in Esalen, California, in 1984 when it was still legal. He said, "It made me feel how all of us would like to feel we are anyway . . . smooth and open hearted, not soggy, sentimental or stupid.” Another psychologist described it as providing a "brief, fleeting moment of sanity". Most people describe the feeling like being in love. The most common feelings experienced are empathy, openness, peace and caring. However, there have been cases in which the user has a decrease in defensiveness, fear or paranoia, sense of separation from others, aggression, and obsessive behavior.
Side effects of Ecstasy can range from mildly uncomfortable to life threatening physical and emotional reactions. Your temperature goes up when you take Ecstasy, like a fever. Dancing in a hot warehouse doesn't help your body cool off, so it's no surprise that one of the most common Ecstasy-related injuries is heatstroke. Along with high body temperature, you sweat and urinate a lot if you take Ecstasy.
Sildenafil Citrate, more commonly known by the brand name Viagra, has become one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in America. Viagra is used to treat erectile dysfunction, also known as impotence. Erectile Dysfunction is best defined as the inability to maintain an erection necessary for sexual satisfaction. Sildenafil has been shown to be effective for a "broad range ED patients, including those with a history of mellitus, depression, … hypertension, diabetes, …and spinal chord injury" (Sildenafil Citrate, par. 29).
Shulgin then goes on to describe how he gave some of the drug to a friend who was about to retire from his career as a psychotherapist. Shulgin then began traveling the country introducing MDMA to other therapists and teaching them how to use it in their therapy (Saunders). All of the therapists Shulgin introduced the drug to began in the same way, taking the MDMA themselves (Saunders). The psychotherapists felt that they had no right to give a psychoactive drug to another person unless they themselves knew how the drug effected their own minds (Saunders). The testing going on between the therapists caused this drug to became readily available on the street as a recreational drug sometime during 1977 (Erowid). "Those first psychotherapists to use MDMA were keenly aware that they had found a valuable new tool." As one put it "MDMA is penicillin for the soul, and you don't give up prescribing penicillin, once you've seen what it can do (Saunders).
LSD stands for Iysergic acid diethylamide. LSD is a hallucinate know to be the most powerful drug of this kind. LSD is commonly known as acid. This drug changes a person’s mental state by distorting the perception of reality to the point where at high doses hallucination occurs. Acid is derived from a fungus that grows on rye and other grains. It is semi-synthetic. It’s manufactured chemically in illicit laboratories, except for a small percent, which is produced legally for research.
Hofmann, A. (1970, January 1). The Discovery of LSD. The Discovery of LSD. Retrieved May 12, 2014, from http://www.psychedelic-library.org/hofmann.htm
Methamphetamine created in 1919 in Japan. It went into wide use for both sides during World War II and it was especially used by Japanese pilots before their flights. Once the war was over, leftover storage of Methamphetamine went public resulting in extremely high amounts of abuse with this drug. During the 1950’s this drug was used as a diet aid and was also used in the thought that it helped to fight depression. It was also over used by college students, truck drivers, and athletes because of its easy availability. This pattern increased remarkably in the 1960’s when this drug became more available in an injectable form. The United States Government in the 1970’s made Meth, for most uses, illegal which then resulted in Mexican drug trafficking organizations to set up large labs in California. Today most of this drug that is available comes from Thailand, Myanmar, and China. (History of Methamphetam...
The father of MDMA is Alexander Shulgin. Shulgin received his PhD in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkley. From there he got a job as a research chemist with Dow Chemicals where he invented a profitable insecticide. The company wanted to reward him for such an invention that they gave him his own lab. Shulgins ambition was to find a drug that was theraputic, and with his research at the lab, he created MDMA, which was the drug that came closest to fulfilling it. (Saunders,p.7)
...zing on increased demand for the drug in the United States. Authorities are especially concerned about the role of organized crime in Ecstasy trafficking. Russian mafias have recently forged relationships with European traffickers and begun to dominate the global Ecstasy trade. The profit potential of Ecstasy is huge for such traffickers. Ecstasy tablets can be bought in Amsterdam for as little as 50 cents to $2 each.
Basically, Ecstasy causes an increased flow of serotonin to the rest of the body, causing a "high." And once the effects of the drug wear off, the brain cannot produce anymore serotonin and consequently the user "crashes", that is, he becomes depressed, slow, and extremely tired (WWW4). Before discussing Ecstasy's neurological effects, let me briefly describe the communication process of the brain. Brain cells communicate with each other by sending chemical messages. These messages, neurotransmitters, are released from nerve terminals at the end of an axon and diffused across the synapse to bind to a receptor located on the pre-synaptic region of another cell.
Steve Jobs (CEO and chairman of Apple Inc.) was an American entrepreneur and inventor. He was born in February 24, 1955 and founded Apple Inc. with his high school buddy Steve Wozniak in 1976. But later in 1976, when Apple was about to bankrupt he returned to it as advisor and Interim CEO. He made Apple profitable from near bankruptcy by 1998 (Walter Isaacson, 2013). From (1996-2011), he proved himself as one of the best engineering leaders of the world and made Apple the most innovative company of the world.
It was initially intended to be used as a blood clotting agent and its psychoactive properties were disregarded until years later in 1965 when psycho-pharmacologist Alexander Shulgin began synthesizing the substance. He tested MDMA on himself and was interested in the drug because of its effects, particularly on inhibition. Shulgin gives a preview of the substance’s therapeutic value when he reported that he “experienced the feeling one has after the second martini. That one is discoursing brilliantly and with particularly acute analytical powers.” The analytical powers that Shulgin mentioned will be assessed further into this chapter when MDMA’s neural mechanism is explained in greater
Steve’s eye for the beauty within technology and his passion for the user experience are they key factors to Apples success. Steve jobs had a rather unique and controversial leadership style that was highly scrutinized by his board of directors as wells as his employees, but ultimately led to the companies success. Jobs leadership could be defined by saying he used the Relational Leadership Model or the Transformational Leadership Model, or even the Great Man Leadership Model, but the truth was that Steve Jobs did not fit into just one of these model. Jobs had a philosophy and leadership style that was authentic and indecent which caused a great deal of friction within Apple. Jobs was known for scourging his employees, working them to death, and then throw them away when he was done with them.
Similarly, athletes welcomed the drugs as performance- enhancing panaceas in postwar years. Around 1950, family doctors embraced amphetamines as psychiatric medications for their distressed patients, cemeting the notion that depression was both commonplace and easily treatable. Moreover, amphetamines were hailed as breakthrough in weight loss and enjoyed enormous success as diet pills, helping to transform obesity into the mencing through preventible and treatable epidemic that medicine views it as today (Rasmussen 3). Today, the use of amphetamines for medical assistance is very common, and as I mentioned before, it aids in many disorders, however, some people don’t neccesarily need the drug for medical purposes. People may simply take it instead as a method of getting high, this would now be considered illegal amphetamines which are not prescribed for medical treatment rather sold in labs for pleasure. People who purchase illegal amphetamines feel the need to use them in order to feel relaxed or to forget about their problems for a while and just be happy. Users experience the “thrill” of a rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure, blood vessel constriction and sweating. The illegal amphetamines, molly, for example makes the user feel as if they can be open, accepting, unafraid and connected to the people around them. The drug effects are stimulated by visuals, sounds, smells, and touch which bring pleasure to the consumer, and is the reason so many people are attracted to the drug (drugpolicy.org). Feelings of relaxation and clarity are reported. People using molly experience heightened sensations and want to intensify these feelings by dancing, talking and touching. Whether they are used legally or illegally they have some negative side effects, both long term or short
Many people are unaware of Steve Jobs’ early life. But, he was born in the year of 1955. His
Like with every drug, there is the underlying risk of addiction. Though ecstasy does not pose as high of a risk for addiction as most other drugs, there is still always going to be a slight risk in place for its users (NIDA, 2016). Another serious and potentially life threatening side effect of ecstasy is the threat of dehydration (NIDA, 2016). Unlike addiction to ecstasy, this side effect does not need several uses to start taking effect. Since t is very short term, meaning it does not take several weeks or months for the effect to set in, dehydration can happen within a handful of hours even if it is the user’s first interaction with the drug. When a person takes ecstasy, the temperature of their body increases, which in turn causes excessive sweating. If the body does not have enough water in it to make up for the extra sweating, the user could be in immediate danger of dehydration. Severe dehydration can lead to a multitude of health problems, with the most alarming and critical one being
Fashion is something that keeps on changing and because of its change, fashion effects our lives nearly in every aspect like language, furniture, homes, cars, clothes, food and many other things. For our second symposium we focus on relationships between fashion and social responsibilities. It is strange but true that social responsibilities intersect with fashion. As there are many phases to fashion from ideation, design, production, distribution, sale, consumption, and ultimately disposal, and in many situations decisions can reflect socially responsible views and sensibilities. Designs...